


in a body like a grave

by liebchen



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Ghosts, M/M, Road Trips, Sad old men in a sad old car
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-09 02:07:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13471428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liebchen/pseuds/liebchen
Summary: The Soldier pulls the man named Steve out of the Potomac, and keeps on going.





	in a body like a grave

**Orders**  

  1. Let him fall.
  2. Jump from the sky.
  3. Get out of the water.
  4. Find the car. _Go_.
  5. Ditch the car in Bethesda.
  6. Hitchhike to Pikesville.
  7. Beer cans on the floor. The driver slumped over the steering wheel, eyes glazed open. Somewhere remote, but not too remote. _He never even saw the tree._
  8. Wait for the signal on the top floor of the building with the red blinking sign. You know the signal, don’t you, Soldier?
  9. Extraction.
  10. Report.
  11. Nutrition, and cleansing, and rest, unless there has been noncompliance, in which case, first, a _conversation_.
  12. a. The chair.  
  
b. The ice.   
  
c. The black.



 

** Actions **

  1. Let him fall.
  2. Jump from the sky. _You’ve been here before._
  3. Get out of the water.
  4. Gasping. Drowning.
  5. Get back in the water.
  6. Drag the body to the tree line; put your mouth down to his.
  7. Wait, without expression, for the first hacking breath.
  8. Hand to your holster.
  9. Come away empty.
  10. a. There is mud on your knees.  
  
b. There is blood in your hair.  
  
c. The sensation, for no reason you can name, of snow.



 

The tank was full, but the car is old. He stops at a gas station an hour and a half out, covers the body with a moth-eaten blanket he found in the trunk. Fleas? Maybe. But he’s had worse. (Has he? Yes. No. _Shut up._ )

The Soldier buys a clean shirt (“Maryland is for crabs!”), and three protein bars, and ibuprofen, and a keychain, whose proceeds support the local middle school art program. The girl behind the counter smiles at him. Her braces are bright pink.  

He has a tooth missing at the back of his mouth. Been missing a lot longer than she’s been alive. His handers say he lost it in a fight, but when he presses his tongue between the gap, there’s always a faded watercolor kind of sensation that splashes across his eyes, the way they sometimes do: a rusty sink, rot in his gums, a hand on his back, _Calm down, Buck._

His hand spasms. The girl’s smile stutters, and stops.

In the bathroom he splashes his face with water and then, after a hesitation, dunks his whole head under the faucet. He looks in the greasy mirror. There’s a ghost smiling back. His mouth tastes like bile. He spits into the sink. Gags at the aftertaste.

The man at the next sink over chuckles. “That bad?" 

“Buddy,” says the Soldier, in a voice he does not recognize, “you have no idea.”

 

Orders march across the inside of his brain: _ditch the car in Bethesda, wait for the signal, let him fall, noncompliance_. There’s a bitter, metal taste in his mouth. They gave him pills for it then, but there won’t be pills now. Instead, there will be a _conversation_ , and the chair. Depending on how late he is – how mad they are, or how bored – they might not even give him the yellow liquid needle before the ice. They like the screaming; they always like the screaming, but frostbite produces a particularly dulcet pain.  

There’s an exit coming up: _get off, drive fast, they won’t notice what you’ve done, what have you DONE_. He presses the gas pedal, hard.

They charge forward. There should be no forward. The Soldier squeezes the steering wheel, and it surprises him, the feeling of his knuckles tightening, of skin, taut across his bones.

In the passenger seat, the body is asleep. In the passenger seat, Steve is asleep.

 

There was a doctor, once, a long time ago, maybe. The Soldier can’t remember what she smelled like or what color were her eyes, but he remembers that before she put the needles in, she would rub something on his arm that stung his eyes but made it so the pain felt as far away as his mind does mostly. She didn’t stop them from hurting him, but she turned her eyes away, and at the time he thought that an act of kindness.

The man didn’t look away, even when he was the one making the hurt. He’d stared into the Soldier, and when he’d seen all the way down, he’d flinched. And he didn’t try to hide it.

The Soldier is making a list of things he wants. It’s a dangerous, wicked feeling, like swiping a candy bar from the corner store and splitting it down by the docks with your best friend, except you give him a little bit more and shove your half in your mouth before he can check, and his cheeks get that sort of baby-blush pink that means he’s angry and happy at the same time but doesn’t know what to do with it, and it makes him look so _good_ , it makes him look so damn _good_ -

No. (no no no no NO)

The Soldier is making a list of the things that he wants. He wants to ditch this car. He wants to get more guns. He wants to tell the ghost that lives in his head to go away, please, and don’t come back. He wants to learn what **Наташа** means, and why it’s tattooed on the back of his brain. He wants to kill a lot of people. He wants to wash his hair. He wants to see the Grand Canyon. He wants to learn who Steve is, and why he looks at him like that.

He wants to find the nurse, and show her what they did to him, and make it so that she can’t look away.

 

Rogers sleeps through Maryland and into West Virginia. The Soldier tries to force-feed him ibuprofen, but the Captain splutters it back at him in spittley chunks, so he gives up. His wounds have already healed. He isn’t hurt, somehow, in the same way the Soldier isn’t hurt, somehow. Other people would smile at that, _a connection_. The Soldier tries to smile. It strains his mouth.

He veers north near Morganville, West Virginia, for no particular reason other than that he doesn’t trust the traffic patterns on the I-68. The Captain is mumbling in his sleep. They are now entering Pennsylvania, the Soldier is surprised to find.

Bucky watches him in the rearview mirror, expressionless.

 

Rogers sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps. He sleeps so long the Soldier takes to periodically checking the in and out of his breath. The windows are rolled down, because he might be an iceberg but it’s mid-August hot, and Hydra didn’t spring for air conditioning. Unionville smells like hot cement and smoke. It’s familiar, in a back-of-the-mouth sort of way. A uniform he isn’t wearing sticks to his back. A boy he doesn’t love slings an arm around his shoulders. _I’d die for a shower. – You’ll die either way. – Fuck off, Barnes. –_ _Language_ , captain.

The same truck almost hits them, twice. What a way to go.

  

North, still, because another direction means another decision, and you’ve certainly made enough of those today, eh, Soldier?

The sky is dark, and the damp is setting in. His clothes have mostly dried, but he hasn’t stopped moving since the Helicarrier. There’s a clammy, fishy, river smell which stinks up the car and makes his nose wrinkle. He hasn’t been cleaned since the last thaw – there were other, bigger concerns, and besides, it made them laugh, to see him stew in filth. He doesn’t mind the smell, but the man at the drive-thru wrinkled his nose, and that he’s conspicuous.

(Captain America, though? He glances at the torn spangles. The thought of touching him. Of washing him. Of treating him with care. His hand wasn’t built for this. He wasn’t bred for this. He will leave the body alone.)

 

 “So,” Bucky asks the Soldier, “what’s the plan?”

 “Go away,” the Soldier says. His voice bounces off the tiles, reverberating through the empty room. Mud sloshes down the drain. Can Hydra track bath water? Probably. 

“I’m just saying.” Bucky leans against the wall, watching him with practiced disinterest. The towel the man at the front gave him is damp, but he’s had worse. He pats himself down, taking extra care to scrub the grit out of his arm joints. They’ve seized up before, and they had to replace the fingers. Didn’t bother icing him first.

“Hey. Are you listening?”

 “No.” Backtalk. A thrill – more of a shiver – down his spine.

 “' _No_ ’.” The Soldier hadn’t realized how cruel his voice can sound. Maybe that’s why they don’t bother begging; they already realize they’re lost. “What are you doing, James? Do you know what they’ll do when they find you? When they find  _him_?”

The Soldier continues to dry (dampen) himself. “They will not.”

“They did before. And now you’re off on a cross-country road trip with the most famous face in America. How long do you think it’ll take? – I give it a day. Two, maybe, if the Captain wakes up. Although who knows what  _he’ll_  do.” He tugs conspicuously at his torn uniform. The sleeve flaps loose from a phantom wind. “Never could predict Stevie, could we?”  

  _Gun, scream, Steve, snow._  “If they find us,” the Soldier says, “I’ll kill them.” The certainty surprises him. 

“I want to see the look on your face when they drag him away. Do you think they’ll make you do it?” Bucky tilts his head a little, considering. “Do you think you’ll like it?”

It’s a clean shot: the knife hits square between Bucky’s eyes. It clatters to the floor. Bucky gives him one last, pitying look, and then he isn’t there.

 

When he comes out of the truck stop, freshly shaven, the body is awake.

It’s 9:10:36(…7…8), 8:10:39 in Chicago, 4:10:40 in Cairo. The Captain’s eyes are wide, nervous, blue. The Soldier brain wants to compare them to something nice, like a lake, or whatever the opposite of a gunshot wound is, but all it can come up with is, _it’s almost dawn in Kabul._

“Bucky,” Captain America says.

“Shut up,” the Soldier says.

“Okay,” the man says.

Steve shuts up.


End file.
